Ghana Is Moving Towards Energy Self-Sufficiency – President Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama has assured Ghanaians of a better energy supply in subsequent days ahead where the flow of power supply will not be on the dependency on other sources.

Ghana is moving towards energy self-sufficiency, the president said during his last state of the nation address at the parliament house today.

For close to three years, the country was plunged into a state of unstable power supply. This led to the destruction of some businesses and loss of jobs by some persons as well.

President Mahama during the 2015 state of the nation address promised to fix the energy problems in the country.

His then power minister, Dr Kwabena Donkor pledged to lay down his work as the Power Minister if the ‘Dumsor’ as it was popularly referred to do not stop.

He ended his work in the latter part of December 2015 after there were still disturbances of the energy supply.

President John Dramani Mahama in his address today said the efforts of the government to fix the problem is gradually moving “Ghana towards energy self-sufficiency”.

Read a copy of his statement on Power;

Mr. Speaker,
The early years of this government was characterized by a crippling power crisis. The shortage of power led to a very unpopular load management programme. This shortage of power hobbled the growth of the economy, and affected both business and residential customers. Many businesses had to resort to the use of generators to survive.

Mr. Speaker,
I stood on the floor of this very house and took full responsibility for the crisis and promised that I would do my utmost to fix the problem. It has taken a lot of hard work and effort. Fast tracking the deployment of emergency plants, and speeding up the completion of ongoing plants ensured that we added more than 800MW of power over an 18-month period. This increased generation, in addition to the Energy Sector Levy and ongoing works to restructure the legacy debt of the power utilities, has helped to stabilize the power situation.

With the expectation of more domestic gas from the Ten and Sankofa Fields, Ghana is entering into an era of energy self-sufficiency. Indeed, the warning signals have started sounding about the danger of over- capacity and excess redundancy in the power sector.

We have agreed to work with the World Bank to rationalize the addition of new plants and ensure that we achieve optimum utilization of existing capacity.

Mr. Speaker,
Access to power under my administration has continued to increase. Ghana has one of the highest access to electricity estimated to be above 80% currently. Additional pending electrification programmes like the China Water Company and the Hunan Energy projects will bring even more communities onto the national grid.